Startup Illumio Asks: Hey, Can You Help Me Find This?

Silicon Valley startup Tacit Software is in the process of unveiling its next generation online collaboration tool, dubbed Illumio, which combines a search engine with social networking.

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Silicon Valley startup Tacit Software is in the process of unveiling its next generation online collaboration tool, dubbed Illumio, which combines a search engine with social networking.

Like a search engine, the tool allows users to search for a particular piece of information. However, it also allows other users of the service to provide more direct assistance.

Illumio was designed as a scaled-down version of Tacit's flagship ActiveNet product. Tacit put ActiveNet on the market as an information management tool for use by large corporations, in a bid to connect people with the information they need.

"From lawyers looking for documents to reporters looking for contacts to consumers looking for travel information, Illumio is designed to work within groups of people on the Internet," said Chris Yeh, vice president of marketing for Tacit. "You could use Illumio to find [and communicate with] different members of a group when you have a need for information or contacts."

The free Illumio software works by scanning each users PC for all text sources including documents, e-mails, favorites, browser caches, etc. From there, Illumio users join groups in order to communicate information.

Any user in a particular Illumio group can send out a "single blind request" for information they are looking for. In addition, each person in that group has the ability to both search for information and "receive" searches that match him or her.

"Illumio doesn't mine people's computers and then make the information available," Yeh said. "We allow users to push out a request and all of the other PCs in the group evaluate that outbound request to see if it matches any data on their machine. If not, then nothing happens. If it does, [the service] flags that individual user, so it's almost like a reverse search."

If five journalists from a particular media organization wanted to form a group to share information, one of them would log onto the system, create a group and invite the other colleagues, Yeh said. In those invitations, each individual could opt to download the Illumio software onto their PC and let the sharing process begin.

"So, let's say you sent out a request asking if anyone has contact information for David Gilmore, CEO of Tacit," Yeh said.

All other PCs in the group would process that by searching their system for any data that matches the request. So if any member of the group had ever e-mailed Gilmore, the Illumio service would flag that person by sending them a message: "a member of your group is looking to contact Gilmore and your system has determined that you are a good match  would you like to respond?"

"From the point of view of receiving searches, we've built Illumio to operate like a one-way mirror," Yeh said. "So if you're an Illumio user you can see what other people in a group are searching for and you can automatically see the searches that match you best. But other people can't even see that you exist, let alone why you match. You choose which searches to respond to, and only then do you make yourself 'visible' to searchers."

The Internet-based Illumio service, which will be initially available for PCs only, requires users to install a desktop search engine  either Google or MSN Desktop  in order to offer up basic information. That software is used to make the decision about whether a specific user is relevant to a search.

"When you type a search in our system it goes through our service and is distributed throughout the group," Yeh said. "Local PCs then handle the request all the way down the line."

To handle the request process, Illumio uses a process called brokering.

"Illumio serves as the broker between two people where we can direct a request outbound but only hook two people up when there is consent on both sides," Yeh said.

Aside from the patented technology that enables response-relevant requests, Illumio will offer its users additional features like "hotspots."

"An Illumio hotspot is a concept that is meant to handle a more public forum," Yeh explained. "Let's say a travel Web site has an Illumio group  you could join that group and send out questions to connect with those people in the public forum."

As with the original service, Illumio hotspot groups give users the option of responding to anonymous requests. The requests also remain anonymous until one user responds to another.

Tacit has not officially launched Illumio yet, although it first announced the service at this year's PC Forum. The company is currently recruiting small groups of people to test its product. In the near future, Tacit says it plans to ask members that have signed up as testers for feedback, in order to update future versions.

"We don't want to over-hype it early on, so our goal is to roll this service out progressively," Yeh said. "When we get to the public beta point, we would like to have the right feedback in place from our earliest groups of testers and move on from there."

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